Okay but I think I need a break from Vila-Matas. Another literary themed novel. ( )

Just what is Mac’s problem? Is it that his business has failed and that he has been forcibly retired? Is it that he is seeing things and people that might not exactly be there? Is it an almost inarticulate suspicion of his wife’s fidelity? Is it that he has too much time on his hands? Is it that he has taken up writing as an avocation? Is it that he has a problem with novels and so prefers the diary as his writing form? Or is Mac’s problem really our common problem: death is looming whether we rush toward it or flee its approach?

Vila-Matas presents a curious figure with Mac. Both utterly sincere and almost wholly unreliable. He is surprisingly well-versed in the history of literature given his apparent prior occupation as a building contractor. But also professes to be an absolute beginner. And despite a stated revulsion of novels and narrative, he regularly finds himself in narratively intriguing situations. His account of his days is both awkward and distancing and yet somehow compelling. And in the end, many readers might, as I was, be left wondering what exactly Vila-Matas is up to here. Not such an unusual response, I suppose, to a Vila-Matas novel. But one which probably undercuts a whole-hearted recommendation of said novel to others. Maybe this novel is much better than I’m allowing it to be in these few words. I just don’t know.

Very gently recommended. ( )

Una novela es un espejo que se pasea por un ancho camino, decía Stendhal. En este caso es un espejo que se pasea por la biblioteca de Vila-Matas o por su imaginario lector. Y mientras tanto Mac, el narrador re-escribe otra novela de Vila-Matas, "Una casa para siempre", y un rosario de citas que no sabemos sin son exactas, o al menos yo no lo sé.
Parece una novela ligera, pero tienen una carga de profundidad que te deja tocada para mucho tiempo. Qué voy a leer yo ahora?
( )

Book Review-Mac’s Problem by Enrique Vila-Matas

A retired lawyer fancies himself a writer and decides to keep a notebook in which he writes his observations. Living in Barcelona, in the section he calls Coyote, he wanders the streets meeting with neighbors, merchants, street beggars and strangers.

One of his neighbors, Sanchez, is an accomplished novelist who often hangs out at the local bookstore flirting with its attractive storeowner like he was a “puffed up peacock.”. Mac decides that one of his writing projects will be a rewrite of Sanchez’s best-known work. His entangled thoughts and fantasies result in an internal dialogue which drives the narrative.

In several of his books Vila-Matas explores the creative process. In Mac’s Problem he is focused on the short form. Mac prefers poems and short stories to longer pieces of fiction and sites Ana Maria Matute: “the story has an old vagabond heart that wanders into town and then disappears…the story withdraws but leaves its mark.” This is a good description of the book Vila-Matas has written here.

The book has numerous epigraphs, and he mentions dozens of creators whom he obviously admires and models himself after - Marcel Schwob, Alfred Hitchcock, Rimbaud, Roberto Bolano, Faulkner, Poe, Ray Bradbury, Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Perec, Raymond Carver, Ben Hecht, Kafka, Borges, Malamud (“whats next isn’t the point”), Hemingway, Robert Walser, Pessoa, Proust and many more. From this list one can gather the interests and contexts within which Vila-Matas concocts this piece of work.

Writing in his notebook serves as an antidote to Mac’s aimlessness. His wife berates him as a “do nothing” person. Yet he ignores her lack of support, imagines her having an affair with first Sanchez and then the local tailor, and decides that “reality doesn’t need anyone to organize it into a plot; it is itself a fascinating, ceaseless creative center.”

He imagines there being a group – The School of Difficult Writing – in which David Markson and William Gaddis are practitioners: “authors who, without actively seeking consensus, share the idea that the narrative is a process with no end point, no destination…the aim is to create a whole program of renewal for the game of the novel, a transformation in line with the need to give the novel a form that fits with our current historical circumstances.”

He sees writing and “the history of literature as a kind of succession of works, a sequence of short story collections, that never stop in one place, which means they’re all susceptible to being given another turn of the screw”. This best sums up Vila Matas’s career and this book. Rewriting, referencing other creators, human history and the creative process is an ongoing process over time.

As with his earlier books: Montano’s Malady, Bartleby and Company, and Dublinesque, Enrique Vila-Matas is a master gamer, a juggler, encyclopediator and student of fiction and life. Mac’s Problem carries on this theme and is a most enjoyable read. ( )

Nope.

Just couldn't get into this at all. By p50 I was flagging, by p100 I was skipping whole pages just to get through. I'm sure I'm missing something, given its longlisting for the International Booker, but it was too self-congratulatory, too self-referentially smug, and while the whole idea of repetition was central to the book, how many times can you read the word 'repetition' without wanting to throw the damn book against the wall....? For those who found this a great read, I salute you. Just not for me. ( )